


Aftermath

by nikkiRA



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, i cannot believe, make way for the raven king spoilers, post last chapter pre epilogue, this is so fucking sappy i hate myself, this is.......disgusting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 22:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6677836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiRA/pseuds/nikkiRA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>*The Raven King spoilers*</b>
</p><p>Ronan smiles. It is not a particularly wide or bright smile, in reality, but in the dimness of the room, and the dimness of the situation, and the dim feeling that has been inside of Adam for a while, the smile seems like a light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> this is so...............disgusting.........

They wait. After so long, that is all they can do. There are no other options for them. No other magic tricks.

They wait.

It is slow. No, that might not be true. It might not be slow. Gansey has not been dead for long, but at the same time he has been dead for far too long. This is not a world any of them wanted.

They wait. They pray. Ronan sends frantic pleas in Latin, in English, in any language that exists and some that don’t. Gansey is dead but not cold, and this is why they do not notice when warmth starts returning into him.

Cabeswater has spent so much time being unmade; now is the time for it to make.

“Blue,” comes a whispered sound. It is so quiet that they would not notice it if they hadn’t been waiting for it.

Adam looks up. There is still blood on his face. Ronan has stopped breathing. Henry Cheng looks like someone who has no real idea what is happening but knows he doesn’t like it.

Blue touches Gansey’s face. She has started crying again. She doesn’t notice.

They are silent, unbelieving. Waiting for this to not work. Magic was one thing, but Adam had said it before – raising the dead was something different entirely.

Unless you were Gansey. Everything was always different with Gansey.

They are silent, until Henry says, “Is anyone else like, _really_ tired?”

Gansey smiles, and that is all the rest of them need.

* * *

They all head back to Monmouth Manufacturing. There are things they have to do, people they have to call, responsibilities, but no one really cares right now.

Ronan heads immediately into his room. Gansey lies down on his bed, and Blue is about to follow before Adam grabs her arm.

“Blue –” he starts, but she shakes her head. She grabs his hand.

“Don’t worry,” she says, like she had known what he was about to say. “It wasn’t you. Any more than it was…” She glances in the direction of Noah’s room, and her lower lip trembles. She turns back to where Gansey had lay down, and he takes her hand, smiling up at her in a way that is so intimate Adam has to look away.

Henry collapses on the couch and covers his eyes with his arm. Adam looks at his options, considers for about a fraction of a second, and then heads towards Ronan’s room.

Orphan Girl grabs his arm. He looks down at her.

“Stay out here,” he tells her kindly. She looks up at him dolefully before heading off towards Noah’s room. She was the only one who could stand the emptiness.

He opens Ronan’s door quietly. Ronan is lying on his bed on his back, and he raises an eyebrow at Adam’s appearance.

“Henry’s on the couch. I couldn’t take Noah’s room.”

“Honoured to know I’m your third choice, Parrish,” he says. Adam sits down on the other end of the bed, elbows on his knees.

“Czerny’s gone, isn’t he?” Ronan says after a few minutes of silence. Adam sighs.

“I think… I don’t know. I just get this feeling. Like he did something substantial for us. Something… huge. Something that caused him to flicker out and I…” he trails off again.

He feels fingers ghost over the small of his back and he leaps up. When he turns around Ronan is staring at him with wide eyes, fingers still outstretched.

“Sorry,” he says, moving back. Adam lets out a breath.

“No, it’s not – you’re fine, I just.” He lets out another breath and lies down, running his hands over his face. After a few moments he feels the other side sink as Ronan returns, a healthy distance between them. He turns his head and opens his eyes to see Ronan staring at him. Adam reaches out and grazes the marks on Ronan’s neck where Adam’s thumbs had been pressing in.

“Sorry,” he says quietly. Like Blue, Ronan shakes his head.

“Wasn’t you,” he says, but that doesn’t help much when Adam has the concrete evidence staring him in the face that he had tried to kill Ronan.

In almost retaliation, Ronan lightly touches the claw marks on Adam’s face. Adam jerks away. “Hurts,” he mumbles.

“You should go to the hospital,” Ronan says. Adam rolls his eyes to the ceiling.

“Fuck that,” he says. “What am I supposed to say, I tried to claw my own face off? They’ll send me to the psych ward.”

“You could say someone else tried to claw your face off.”

“I guess it’s not technically a lie.”

He looks over at Ronan again, who is staring at Adam’s hands. He is looking at the knuckles; they are red and cut open from where Adam – or, rather, the demon – had slammed them against the tree.

Ronan keeps complete eye contact as he lifts Adam’s hand to his mouth and gently kisses the knuckles.

Adam swallows.

“I think we need to rename Orphan Girl.”

“She didn’t have a name to begin with,” Ronan says, still holding Adam’s hand.

“Fine, then we have to _name_ Orphan Girl. Don’t be difficult.”

Ronan smiles. It is not a particularly wide or bright smile, in reality, but in the dimness of the room, and the dimness of the situation, and the dim feeling that has been inside of Adam for a while, the smile seems like a light. It seems impossible that anyone could be smiling right now, least of all Ronan, but Adam guesses that if you weighed today’s events with the fully living, breathing Gansey who was more than likely spooning Blue Sargent in the next room, there were things worth smiling about.

“What do you suppose a good name for a weird little girl with hooves is? And don’t say Bambi.”

“I wasn’t going to say Bambi,” Adam says defensively. “I’ve never even seen Bambi.”

“Do poor people not watch movies?”

Adam snorts. “Shithead.”

“Couldn’t afford a VCR?”

Adam kicks him lightly. There is a laugh deep inside of him, somewhere far within, and even though he knows he will not be able to give voice to it for a while, it is comforting to know the ability is still within him. Somewhere that Ronan could reach.

“Do you think it’s over now?”

Ronan snorts. “I don’t even fucking know what it was, Parrish. I doubt it, anyway. I can pull shit from my dreams and you sold yourself to a forest that doesn’t exist anymore.”

“You don’t have to make it sound like prostitution.”

“Gansey keeps coming back to life,” Ronan continues as if he hadn’t heard Adam, “and Blue is, well, Blue, and fucking Henry Cheng is here, now, for some reason that I’m still not totally up to speed with. So no, I guess I don’t think it’s over, whatever the fuck it even was in the first place.”

Adam is quiet. He is still thinking about the selling himself comment.

Ronan turns onto his side and Adam mirrors his position. “What are we supposed to do now?” Adam asks quietly. It feels like he has spent his entire life worrying about Gansey’s death, even though he knows it’s only been a few months. There’s also the fact that Adam doesn’t know what Gansey is like without Glendower. Adam doesn’t even know if Gansey knows.

Ronan shrugs, an awkward gesture considering his position.

“You’re going to have to start coming to school,” Adam says. Ronan rolls his eyes.

They are quiet again. Ronan’s fingers are still rubbing lightly over Adam’s bruised knuckles. Adam is suddenly aware of the fact that he has wanted to kiss him again since he came into the room, he just doesn’t know how.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” he says, which probably isn’t the way to do it, but it had to be said. Ronan closes his eyes and shakes his head.

“Don’t,” he warns. “Not right now, I can’t –” He takes a breath, and Adam is horrified to see that he is close to tears. “Not yet, Adam,” he says quietly, and he thinks that might be what it is, the way his first name sounds between Ronan’s lips, because he is leaning forward, closing the gap between them. Ronan’s hand tightens on his when Adam kisses him, and he shifts closer. Adam is very, very acutely aware that they are lying horizontally in a bed, but the only places where Ronan touches him are his hand and Ronan’s fingers placed gently on his cheek. He kisses Adam back gently; Adam is struck, again, at how gentle Ronan is. Adam had used to think that you could cut yourself on Ronan’s personality, that he was made entirely of sharp edges and you had to tread carefully. He hadn’t known this Ronan; this Ronan, who named his pet bird after a power tool but cradled her close to his heart, who dreamt Adam up cream for his hands, who had brought an orphan girl back from his dreams and protected her with all he had. Who loved so deeply; who kissed Adam Parrish like he was worth it.

Adam keeps his eyes closed even as Ronan pulls away. He feels Ronan touch his cheek and the area around his eye. Adam breathes in and out, steadily.

He is so tired. He feels like he hasn’t slept in days. Adam is almost always tired even on normal, non-magical days, and today he can feel it even more. It has settled in his bones.

He yawns.

Ronan rests a hand on Adam’s hip and Adam listens to his breathing even out, trying to match his own to Ronan’s steady rhythm. There is so much to do. There are things to figure out, things that need explanations, people who need to be told and mourning to be done, mourning for Aurora Lynch and Noah and Cabeswater and all the things that almost were. For those few horrible minutes of a Ganseyless world.

But for now there is this – Gansey alive in the next room curled around a girl Adam no longer has feelings for. Noah gone but not forgotten. Henry Cheng asleep on a couch. Orphan Girl, possibly sleeping, possibly eating the sheets off of Noah’s bed. It is Chainsaw sleeping a few feet away and a type of magic that still runs through his veins and a dreamer asleep beside him, hand clasped on Adam’s hip, breath in his face. And there is so much, and it almost overwhelming in its complicatedness, but for now this is enough. In a world filled with things that don’t make sense, Adam has somehow found refuge in sharp edges.  

He tangles their feet together and falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @pipermcgay


End file.
